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Friday, December 07, 2012

The U.N. Wants To Regulate The Internet

The U.N. wants to regulate the Internet? I think not, but there are many who would like to see that happen.

This week, Dubai hosted a conference of the United Nations' International Telecommunications Union (ITU)- of which there are 193 Member States and approximately 700 Sector Members- to discuss the future of the Internet and the U.N.'s role in regulating it. Their ultimate goal is to implement:

...a standard for the Internet that would allow for eavesdropping on a worldwide scale.

The ITU members decided to adopt the Y.2770 standard for deep packet inspection, a top-secret proposal by way of China that will allow telecom companies across the world to more easily dig through Web data, according to a report from Russia Today.

Eavesdropping? Anything China or Russia endorse should immediately be suspect, considering their track record regarding personal liberties and freedom. I'm happy to say that the U.S. congress set aside its partisanship and voted unanimously against it.

Representative Greg Walden said ahead of the vote that lawmakers should “send a strong bipartisan, bicameral signal about America’s commitment to an unregulated Internet.”

He said Washington should not “stand idly by while countries like Russia and China seek to extort control over the Internet.”

Dubai saw at least 1,950 delegates there to revise the International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs) treaty. Russia wants the U.N. to handle control, the U.S. does not, for obvious reasons.

The Russians, for example, have proposed giving the ITU control over the Internet rather than multi-stakeholder companies like the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

"We fundamentally disagree with that," U.S. Ambassador Terry Kramer said during a Thursday call with reporters. Governments are not likely to make objective decisions about the Web, he said. The current structure allows for those with tech expertise to make "independent, agile decisions."

When asked if the U.S. had discussed the proposal with the Russians, Kramer said that "we've looked at the proposal, but are not keen to get into a discussion about that proposal because we think it's out of scope for the conference."

Tyrant governments will definitely not make objective decisions regarding the Web. And as we all know, there are more than the world's fair share of those countries

Naturally, Google has also voiced its opposition, especially regarding the censorship issue.

The U.N. has no place regulating the Internet, and we all better pray it doesn't happen.